High Stand

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Yes, but he’d have to be switched on and tuned to the right frequency.’

  He nodded. ‘So it’s the VHP set up in the wheelhouse. D’you know the standby frequency that cutter uses? I’ve only operated VHP on land with an agreed frequency.’

  ‘Channel 16,’ I told him. Trouble is it’s the standby channel for all ships.’

  ‘And if he’s thirty miles away or more, then he’s probably out of range, and we’re blocked off from any of the inside passages by the mountains, so if he’s there …’ He shrugged, smiling at me, his teeth showing in the pale light that had turned almost green. ‘We’ll just have to hope for the best.’

  It wasn’t only that VHP is a direct radio wave, so that if the Coastguards were in another inlet they wouldn’t hear us, but something he didn’t seem to realize was that every ship within an unobstructed 30-mile radius of us would have the call coming through on their loudspeakers. ‘That tug,’ I said, ‘will be only a hawser-length away — they’ll pick us up clearer than any other vessel.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Wait till we’re a lot further south than we are now. In the narrows between Vancouver Island and the mainland there’ll be vessels of all sorts around, lots of fishing boats, more traffic coming in on VHP.’

  There was movement on deck then. I think they were probably checking the towing lights. At any rate, nobody even shone a torch down into the hold. We were back in our log holes, and lying there I tried to work out what to say to Captain Cornish if we were able to get into the wheelhouse and raise him on the VHP set. There were other things on my mind too. I had to know whether or not we were taking the Hakai Passage. If we did, then inside of two hours we would be in the open sea, for it was not much more than five miles from Fitz Hugh Sound to the Pacific. The tug would turn south then, and once past Calvert Island we would be within range of the north end of Vancouver Island. If we didn’t go through the Hakai and kept straight on down the Fitz Hugh we would save at least a couple of hours.

  We decided to wait until the early hours of the morning when the men aft would hopefully be sound asleep in the cuddy and watchkeeping on the tug would be at a low ebb. By then, at three-thirty say, I thought we would probably be in the open sea somewhere in the region of Calvert Island. But it was what I should say when I started calling the outside world on that VHP set that worried me. In the end I decided to sleep on it, having asked Miriam to wake me inside of four hours.

  In fact, I woke of my own accord, for by then I was fairly rested. I was also very hungry. There was starlight in the gap between the logs and the steel rim of the afterdeck. I clambered up the rungs until I could see the Bear and had identified the North Star. It was straight above the wheelhouse, so we were still headed south, and it was not until an hour and a half later, when I had come to the conclusion that we were going to continue straight down the Fitz Hugh, that the position of the stars suddenly began to change. There was a light flashing straight over the bows, its reflection on the wheelhouse gradually changing as we turned. It was to port of us then and I stayed there until we were past it, the reflection of it showing the wheelhouse as a dark shape in silhouette, the stars steadying in their new alignment.

  We had turned almost 90° to starb’d and were in the Hakai Passage.

  Brian poked his head out. ‘We’ve turned, have we?’ He had felt the changed motion, something I had not noticed with my mind concentrated on the stars. I went back to sleep, planning to wake every hour and check our course. The time was then 01.12.

  I woke again just before two and we were still headed south-west, then again a little after 02.30. I think it was the movement that woke me that time, and when I checked the stars, we seemed to be on a more westerly course. There was a flashing light away to port that intermittently illuminated the wheelhouse. That would be the beacon marking the southern side of the passage into the Pacific. No wonder the barge had started to roll quite noticeably, a lazy, slow, flat-bottomed roll which gradually changed to a corkscrew motion, an occasional jerk on the towing hawser sending shivers through the metal hull.

  I checked the position of the stars again and there was no doubt about it, the southerly swell was on our port quarter. We were heading north-west away from Seattle.

  I didn’t tell the others, and I didn’t go to sleep again. It could mean only one thing — that we were on a smuggling run and headed for a rendezvous with the South American carrier somewhere in the mass of islands between our present position and the point where the Inside Passage broke out into open water in Milbanke Sound. I remembered the Spider then, how the Mate had said Captain Cornish had gone in there just for the hell of it, mooring up to a red cedar that was half dead and had a bald-headed eagle’s nest in the upper branches. The whole area had been thick with small rock islands, but all of them steep-to, and deep water everywhere. ‘Looks much worse on the charts than it really is,’ he had said, and now I had this feeling we were being towed there.

  That was when I climbed out onto the deck and peered in at the wheelhouse windows. There was nobody at the wheel, the place deserted. Slipping round the starb’d side, I gently slid open the door and went in. The trap door to the cuddy below was open. After listening for a moment and hearing no sound, I released the securing catch and lowered it quietly to the floor. Then I switched on the VHF set.

  Even then, as I picked up the mike and pressed the button for Channel 16,I wasn’t sure how I was going to phrase my calls, except that I would use Pan, which is urgent but less so than the Mayday distress call. Tan. Pan. Pan. Are you there, Cornish? Calling Cornish. Cornish, Cornish, Cornish.’ I tried my best to imitate a Canadian accent, my lips’ close to the mike and speaking very quietly: ‘This is fishing boat Klewarney calling Cornish.’ I had talked to him a lot about the Kluane and Ice Cold — ‘Klewarney calling Cornish. Come in please Cornish. I got fish for you. Ice Cold. Cornish, Cornish, Cornish. Answer by that name only. Okay? Do you hear me, Cornish? Over.’

  A fishing boat was the first to answer, the accent so strong I could hardly understand him: ‘Yu got fish? Yu tell me where. Where yu are, fella?’ And when I repeated my call, he shouted at me, ‘Who is this Cornish? Yu tell me where yu lying,’ and behind his words I caught the whisper of another voice: ‘Coastguard cutter Kelsey. Coastguard cutter Kelsey - state name of vessel and position. If you want to speak to -‘

  I slammed in then: ‘Get off the air, Coastguard. Shut up, both of you. I want Cornish. Cornish. Nobody else. Do you hear me? Cornish. Over.’

  There was a pause, then Cornish’s voice came on the air, breathless and tinny out of the speaker as I bent my ear to it: ‘Cornish here. Switch to channel 16.’ I switched and his voice came up again, but still very faint, asking me what I wanted.

  ‘I have a big haul for you, and I’m keeping it ice cold. You understand? Over.’

  There was a pause and I thought I had lost him. But then he said, ‘Yes, I think so. Where are you?’

  ‘North of where we were three nights ago,’ I told him. ‘About ten miles. Your Mate will know. He said you’d been there once. Tied to a tree with an eagle’s nest in it. You got that? Over.’

  Again the pause, and the indistinct murmur of voices then: ‘Yeh, reckon we got the message. A big haul, you say…’

  But I shut down on him then, for the tug had suddenly come on the air quite loud demanding to know what my position was and why I was putting out a Pan call. Then abruptly everything went quiet and I switched off, opening up the trap door again and slipping out of the wheelhouse, back to the hold. I had done all I could. It was now up to Cornish.

  Just after four a change of movement warned me we were turning. The barge was rolling again, quite heavily, the wind catching us almost broadside and making a whining sound. A glance at the stars confirmed the alteration of course. We were headed almost due east, straight in towards the land, the speed of the tow falling away until we seemed to be barely moving. Then, suddenly, we were under the lee, the rollin
g abruptly ceased, no wind at all. We were in the Spider. I had no doubt of that, and shortly after that there was a dreadful grating sound, steel on rock as we ground to a halt against one of the islands; then feet pounding, lots of shouting, followed by a hollow thud and the sound of the tug’s engines close alongside.

  ‘We’ve left it too late,’ Brian hissed at me. And when I told him I had already contacted the cutter he could hardly believe me. ‘Christ! I was fast asleep. Where are we?’

  ‘At the rendezvous.’ And I explained where I thought we were.

  Footsteps on the deck again, the sound of mooring lines being made fast, voices calling back and forth, then somebody in authority - it sounded like the Greek tugmaster - calling those on the barge to come aboard the tug for breakfast. ‘How longa’we got, Captain?’ And another voice answered him, ‘Bout an hour, that’s all.’ They were scrambling onto the tug, somebody asking where the supply ship was and a voice answering, ‘Holed up in Kildidt Sound.’

  ‘Tha’s not much more than coupla miles away.’

  ‘Sure. But they gotta go round — Fulton Passage or else Spider Channel. They ain’t gonna fly, that’s for sure. So Skip’s probably right. You got ‘bout an hour. Okay?’

  The footsteps died away, everything suddenly quiet except for the slow grinding of the two hulls as they moved to the ghost of a swell coming in through the entrance. I went up the rungs then, peering cautiously out. We were in what appeared to be a lake, rock islets all covered in trees and merging into one another so that there was what appeared to be a continuous shoreline of green all round us. Glimmers of sunlight glinted on the water, the surface ruffled by a slight breeze, and the tug standing over us, funnel and deck housing higher than the logs on the deep-laden barge. The wheelhouse appeared to be deserted. I could actually see right through it to the mountains beyond and a mackerel sky, the scaling of the cloud all silver like a dusting of snow.

  The radio had been left on and I could hear a voice, an Indian by the sound of it. He seemed to have got himself and his fishing boat hopelessly lost. ‘Bloody Indians.’ Somebody had entered the tug’s wheelhouse from below. ‘Drunk, I bet. Sleeps it off and when he wakes up don’t know where the fuck ‘is shit-bag of a boat is. Typical.’ And another voice said, ‘What about that Klewarney boat?’ It sounded like the tug’s Master. ‘He wasn’t lost and he seemed a lot nearer. Who was he calling?’

  ‘One of the fish company ships by the sound of it. Calling Pan like that. Raised the Coastguard cutter, didn’t he? Wonder where those buggers are?’

  ‘Wherever they are, they’ll be occupied now, presuming that Indian’s put out a search-and-rescue call.’

  ‘Sure. So why don’t you finish your meal. We’ll be busy ourselves soon.’

  I didn’t hear the reply, for both of them went out by the other door and all was quiet again, only another fisherman jabbering away on the radio to a mate of his down around Egg Island at the entrance to Smith Sound. I climbed back down to my log hide, Brian whispering to me, ‘You reckon the captain of that cutter understood what you were telling him?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘How long before he gets here?’

  But I couldn’t answer that. I’d been going to ask Cornish what his position was, but then the tug had come on the air and I had had to shut down.

  ‘They could radio for a helicopter.’ Miriam was rubbing at her left leg as though it had gone to sleep. ‘You said they had one on that night operation. If they called in a helicopter -‘ But I had to tell her it was most unlikely. It would mean explaining the whole situation over the air to the Rescue Coordination Centre at Victoria and, presuming Cornish had understood my message, he would be afraid the tug might be monitoring his radio calls.

  ‘Then he may be too late.’ Miriam’s voice was strangely calm. ‘In which case Tom’s death …’ I detected a tremor then. ‘Isn’t there an airbase somewhere you can contact on VHP?’ But even as she said it she seemed to realize the impracticability of it - ‘No, of course … So we just wait.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wishing I had been able to get their position, or even a rough indication of it. Waiting is bad enough, but when you don’t know how long you’ve got to wait… ‘They won’t be long,’ I added, but she knew very well I was only saying that to bolster her courage, and mine too. Voices on the deck of the tug then, one of them cursing the cook for not having served steak for breakfast. ‘Bacon, sausages and mash — there’s better’n that served in the bloody army now.’

  I crawled back in amongst the logs, cursing the man for drawing attention to the emptiness of my stomach. I had had nothing now for twenty-four hours and would have willingly settled for bangers and mash, or anything else I was offered. Other voices emerged from the tug’s bows, and then suddenly they were all over the after end of the barge, doing something to the upper layer of logs - what, I couldn’t gather. All I knew was that they seemed to be working their way downwards and there was a lot of straining and cursing. Soon feet came into view, boots braced on the steel rungs and sawdust raining down. A muttered curse and more straining. Something had been hammered in too tight. ‘Look at my bloody nails!’

  What the hell were they up to? And then, when I saw a boot feeling for the rung right opposite where I lay, I thought it would only be minutes before they discovered us. But that was as low as they came, and after another ten minutes or so they all retreated on deck, the job, whatever it was, apparently done.

  We had half an hour of quiet after that, and then somebody shouted, ‘Coming in through the entrance now.’ Soon the steady thump-thump of a single screw sounded through the metal hull of the barge.

  After that everything became very confused. There was a sense of unreality almost, as though it was some radio play I was listening to, for there was nothing to see, only sounds, and these to be interpreted as best I could. As a result, I don’t think I was at all scared, my mind being concentrated in my ears, my imagination totally engrossed in trying to convert sounds into visual activity.

  The tug’s engines started up. That was the first thing. I heard its hull scraping along the side of the barge as it-moved away, and then, after a little while, there were voices calling, different voices speaking some sort of Spanish patois, the sound of mooring lines hitting the deck, fenders rubbing and squeaking along the port side as the hull of the barge was thrust sideways, a violent movement that ground our plates against the rock. We were made fast to the new arrival, and as soon as that was done and the movement had subsided there were men all over us.

  What they were doing I couldn’t make out, but they seemed concentrated at the for’ard and after ends of the barge and their movements suggested they were taking cargo on board. But where they were putting it I had no idea. It certainly didn’t come down past the ends of the logs where we were concealed. If it had, we should certainly have been discovered. As it was, I never saw any more of the men working above me than the occasional foot placed on the rung immediately outside my lair, and then only when they started hammering. It sounded like wood on wood, as though periodically one of them took up a mallet and started beating at a log.

  The loading and periodical hammering went on for pre cisely twenty-seven minutes. I timed it, thinking perhaps it might be important to know how long it took to load the cargo. And all the time they were talking, a mixture of English and Spanish that at times was about as incomprehensible as pidgin English. Once I heard what sounded like an Irishman say, ‘Jeez, you’d never think there was that many junkies, would you now? Do you think they cleared this lot with St Peter?’ And they laughed.

  That was the only time any of them referred to the cargo and the only clue I got from listening to their talk. But at least it confirmed what the Hallidays had been saying — this really was a drug run. At no time did I hear anything that indicated what they were doing with the stuff and I could only presume that it was in very durable bags that were being tamped into the interstices between the logs.

  A
s soon as they had finished loading, the lines were let go and the vessel moved away, out into the open water between the islands, the thump of its screw gradually fading. By then the tug was backing up to us, the thresh of water from its stern getting louder, then dying away as men at the for’ard end of the barge made the towing hawser fast. A shout of ‘Let go ashore!’ then ‘Take her away’ was followed by renewed threshing that faded until the hawser was taut and the barge plucked sideways, juddering and scraping itself against rock.

  The sound diminished, then ceased abruptly, and after a moment we could hear the swish and gurgle of water against the hull. We were under way, the tow’s next stop Seattle, unless Cornish had read between the lines of my message and had understood what I had been trying to tell him. I wasn’t at all certain he had, also I didn’t know how far away he had been. The range for VHP can be very variable, dependent on the terrain and the conditions, and the fact that his voice had sounded so faint that I could hardly decipher what he had been saying did not necessarily mean that he was outside the normal limits of very high frequency transmission.

  He was, in fact, over forty miles away, just to the south of Hannah Rocks and heading east for the Alexandra Passage inside Egg Island in an effort to pick up the Indian fisherman who kept coming on the air to say he was lost somewhere in the region of Smith Sound. They had continued to search for him after I had radioed in, for forty miles to the south of us conditions were very different: the wind had dropped and with it the temperature. They were in thick fog, and with the entrance to Smith Sound littered with rocks and shoals they were concerned for the Indian’s safety.

  There was, of course, a good deal of speculation in the cutter’s wheelhouse about the identity of the Kluane and whether there was a fish storage vessel of that name waiting to receive a large haul that was being kept frozen. Only gradually did the truth sink in as they argued about it, remembering how I had talked of Ice Cold as a mine and Edmundson had confirmed it as being in the Kluane. But they still didn’t see how I or Tom Halliday could be calling in on the VHP distress channel.